A plan was hatched a distant moon ago thereBy "elders" who liked power quite a lot And there's no telling what it all will sew there--That Jewish plot. The Zionists have stolen all the land there.You see it has our knickers in a knot.And we won't rest until they curb their warfare--That Jewish plot.

As community organizations dedicated to enhancing the quality of life for Jewish students on campus, and advocating for the Jewish community, we read your recent statements in the Canadian Jewish News (CJN) and the National Post with great interest. We were disappointed to see comments that we felt were condescending to the concerns of our community and dismissive of the concerns of our students. While we acknowledge your stated commitment to combat bigotry and enhance inclusion, your administration’s failure to address the growing sense of alienation among Jewish students on campus has led many in our community to question whether York University’s leadership is either incapable of, or unwilling to, uphold its own ideals. We remain alarmed by the seeming disregard of York University’s administration to recognize and confront antisemitism on campus.

You stated in the CJN that the mural at York University contributed to your decision to establish an advisory committee on inclusion. We were astonished to learn that almost half of the members appointed to the inclusion committee either support BDS or have been publicly critical of Israel. These appointments cannot possibly be reconciled with encouraging inclusion, and will only serve to increase tension and further alienate Jewish students and faculty.

If your desire and the policies of the administration are to build an inclusive and diverse campus that nurtures the respectful exchange of ideas, we call on you to make a change. Remove any members of the committee with a record of publicly promoting BDS and other anti-Israel initiatives and replace them with those experienced in bridging differences and strengthening harmony on campus.

The community organizations that have signed this letter represent the diverse Jewish community in the GTA. We are unified in our message to you and this letter reflects our concern for Jewish students and faculty. Our collective goal is to ensure that the administration acts in a manner consistent with its stated goal of encouraging inclusion. Our desire has always been, and remains, to work with you and your administration to achieve this goal.

As you have stated, York University has a proud history in the community. By taking meaningful steps to address discrimination and intolerance on campus, York University has the opportunity to be a leader in North America in dealing with these difficult issues in an effective and equitable manner.

Muslims in Canada are becoming more observant -- they attend mosque more frequently and more women are now wearing face veils and headscarves than a decade ago. They're also big-time Liberal voters and optimistic about the new government.

These are some of the interesting results from the Environics Institute's updated study on Muslims in Canada released Wednesday. The phone survey conducted between November and January asked 600 Muslim adults across the country their views on a variety of religious and social questions, updating a similar study done in 2006. Muslim leaders and scholars participated in the development of the survey.

"Religious observance among Muslims has strengthened over the past decade," the report notes. "An increasing number are attending mosques for prayers on a regular basis (at least once a week) and (among women) are wearing the hijab."

This religious devotion is strongest among the younger cohorts. Those aged 18 to 34 are the most observant. "Compared with older Muslims," the report explains, "they identify primarily as Muslim rather than as Canadian, and express a slightly weaker sense of belonging to the country."

While only 5% of immigrants say their attachment to Islam weakened since arriving, 41% say it's strengthened.

They're also less tolerant of liberal values, as the study explains: "Muslims are more likely than other Canadians to value patriarchy ('the father must be the master in the home') and to reject homosexuality...

I hate to mix a metaphor, but in the pecking order of victim groups, you can always count on the squeakiest wheel prevailing.In other words, in our much-vaunted "human rights" Trudeaupia, Muslims trump gays 9 times out of 10.Update: Dear Environics--this is what more Muslims in Canada means--a bigger, louder, angrier Al Quds Day:

Former London Mayor Ken Livingstone has been suspended by the opposition Labour Party after he said during a BBC interview: “Let’s remember, when Hitler won his election in 1932 his policy then was that Jews should be moved to Israel. He was supporting Zionism before he went mad and ended up killing six million Jews.”

There was outrage at his remarks and calls for suspension, which culminated on Thursday with this statement from the party:

Livingstone, the London mayor from 2000 to 2008, is known for his controversial remarks and left-wing politics, which earned him the monicker “Red Ken.”

The events that led to Livingstone’s suspension from the party had their most recent origins in comments by Naz Shah, a Labour member of Parliament, on her Facebook page before she became a lawmaker last year. Among those that drew attention, and criticism, was one in which an outline of Israel was superimposed on a map of the U.S. with the headline: “Solution for Israel-Palestine conflict—relocate Israel into United States.” The comment on the post: “Problem solved.”

Shah apologized in Parliament—and elsewhere—for her remarks, but Labour suspended her on Wednesday pending an investigation. Livinsgtone was among her strongest supporters. He said it was important not to confuse “criticism of Israeli government policy with anti-Semitism.” Then came his comments to the BBC, which earned him widespread condemnation, including from Sadiq Khan, the Labour Party’s candidate in London’s upcoming mayoral election. (Khan also criticized Shah’s remarks.)...

It is important not to confuse the desire the get rid of Israel (or the demand that it "relocate"), which is out-and-out Jew-hate, with criticism of the Israeli government.

The following, a fan letter to the far left Israeli "human rights" scourges of B'Tselem, appears in the current issue of the Canadian Jewish News (no link online as yet):

In defence of B'Tselem

The serious question that should be raised is the slander against groups like B'Tselem ("Hebron shooting raises serious questions," April 7).

B'Tselem is an organization with huge regard among those for whom human rights provide a nation's moral legitimacy.

While the occupation continues like a Leviathan that keeps dispossessing, growing and crushing the rights of the occupied, does one expect Palestinians to fall to their knees in acquiescence?

Being an occupation army is a dirty business. This does not absolve the occupier from the application of the values that are inherent in both democracy and Judaism, B'Tselem is part of the conscience which may provide Israel with a moral legitimacy that many of its current political and military activities lack.

There is absolutely no case for stating "that while the motivation and reporting of B'Tselem may be questionable" unless one wishes to further diminish Israel's claim to laws of morality and justice.

The stellar commitment of groups like B'Tselem and New Israel Fund and Breaking the Silence are the slender threads through which many claim to be Zionists. In the absence of civil and human rights, can a nation be clothed with the cloak of legitimacy?

Brian Rothberg
Perth, Ont.

Newsflash for you, Mr. R.: Israel has civil and human rights. Israel is legitimate. And your notion that Israel is a "Leviathan" crushing the hopes and dreams of "oppressed" Palestinians is belied by, well, reality (including the reality that "the only legitimate Palestinian state is therefore a Hamas state").Mr. Rothberg (whose claim to be a Zionist, holding on as it is to the slenderest of threads, is tenuous at best) may be a big fan of B'tselem. Me? Not so much. Here's why:

When the United Nations released the so-called Goldstone Report in September 2009, Israelis and their supporters around the world were astonished by the blunt words near its conclusion: “There is evidence indicating serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law were committed by Israel during the Gaza conflict, and that Israel committed actions amounting to war crimes, and possibly crimes against humanity.” The report declared that virtually everything Israel had done during Operation Cast Lead—Israel’s attempt in late 2008 and early 2009 to stop Hamas’s rocket war on Israeli civilians—had been a crime. No single written attack on the Jewish state has been as damning, as prominent, or as influential. And yet the South African jurist Richard Goldstone and his team had only a few months to compile a report that runs to nearly 600 pages and makes hundreds of detailed accusations about the Israel Defense Force’s conduct of the war, and Goldstone himself made only a single four-day visit to Gaza. Where did they secure the evidentiary rope with which to hang Israel?

The report was largely compiled from material provided by what is often referred to as Israel’s “human rights community.” This vague euphemism refers to a coterie of groups and individuals that has evolved over the past decade into a highly politicized movement of dozens of nongovernmental organizations that operate in Israel and subject its government, military, laws, and people to relentless scrutiny and accusation. And, as first pointed out by NGO Monitor, the Goldstone Report relied most heavily on the largest and most prominent among them: the group known as B’Tselem. More footnotes in the report, 56 in all, cite B’Tselem as a source than any other. Indeed, as Jessica Montell, B’Tselem’s executive director, has said, B’Tselem “provided extensive assistance to the UN fact-finding mission headed by Justice Goldstone—escorting them to meet victims in Gaza, providing all of our documentation and correspondence, and meeting the mission in Jordan.”

In making such a profound contribution to the Goldstone Report, B’Tselem was performing the task to which it has truly dedicated itself: not the defense of human rights in the West Bank and Gaza, but the delegitimization of Israel and its existence as a Jewish state...

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Elliott Abrams

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Donald Rumsfeld

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Bret Stephens

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Matthew Continetti

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That's the question that must be asked after reading the intro to Environic' new survey of Muslims in Canada. Notice how it positions Muslims as victims and other Canadians as their heartless victimizers (my bolds):

The Muslim community has been a poorly-understood religious minority in western countries and in the past two decades their presence has become contentious, fuelled by security concerns (in the wake of 9/11) and religious practices (e.g., Sharia law, the niqab). While Canada has yet to experience the gravity of ethnic violence and terrorist attacks that have taken place in other parts of the world, Muslims in this country do not enjoy the acceptance accorded to other religious minorities, and have become a focal point for discomfort about immigrants not fitting into Canadian society. By global standards, Canada is a welcoming multicultural society but the Muslim community faces unique challenges with respect to religious freedom, acceptance by the broader society and national security profiling. Events overseas (major terrorist incidents in European cities, the ongoing conflict in Syria, and the atrocities attributed to Daesh (the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant)) are sustaining a context in which public associations with Islam and its followers are pervasively negative.

Much of the problem stems from the fact that the Muslim community is not well understood by other Canadians, whose impressions are formed largely through simplistic stereotypes emphasizing negative characteristics (violent extremism, honour killings). The result is a dominant narrative of Muslims as different from others and who resist adoption of “Canadian values”, making them untrustworthy.

Truth be told, much of the problem stems from jihad, which is currently enjoying something of a renaissance as it flexes its muscles around the globe. The result is a captivating Islamic narrative of supremacy and domination, and, for those who succumb to its siren call and become "martyrs" for the cause, a posthumous payoff that's non pareil.But, hey, I guess if you make it a question of what Canadians can do to be more welcoming and less given to "simplistic" stereotyping, you don't have to fret your little head about any of that religious stuff.

Truth be told, Obama is living in a movie we all want a part in. In this movie of his everyone is the good guy, everyone loves one another, and most importantly everyone has really good health insurance. Obama's reality is precisely like the health insurance reforms he forced on Americans: In theory everything is wonderful, but in real life it's not all that great. Maybe this is why 83 senators asked to increase defense aid to Israel -- because the world isn't becoming a safer place, even if Attila the Hun isn't around anymore.

"Prince wasn't normal like the regular person, he could function on a lot less sleep than most people," Gordon said. "And we would go, you know, three days sometimes without him getting any sleep. But I do think six days without sleep is unusual and that could be a contributing factor [in his death]."

Monday, April 25, 2016

What a crock! In reality, it was an act of jihad aimed at getting rid of that pesky Jew state, that one whose very existence serves as a rebuke to the promises Allah made to those who choose to "submit".

"This was an act of cold-blooded murder," proclaimed our outraged Prime Minister, who vowed that Canada will do whatever it can to help Philippine officials bring the beheaders to justice.That's as good as far as it goes, but Trudeau's comments don't go nearly far enough. They don't, for example, acknowledge the fact that this wasn't an act of cold-blooded murder as much as it was an act of hot-blooded jihad.

"Intersectionality," which is all the rage on university campuses these days, refers to any number of VERY IMPORTANT VICTIM GROUPS whose grievences/grudges/gripes "intersect," a coming together that amounts to a immense perfect storm of victimhood.So, for example, gays and feminists may find that their gripes about "Zionists" "intersect" with the Muslims' (even though, in a sane world, gays and feminists would manifest a grudge not against the Middle East's sole democratic entity, but against Muslim nations where oppression of gays and chicks is an everyday occurrence).Here's some "intersectionality" outside the hothouse environment of academe, "intersectionality" in the larger world: a young Aboriginal woman with the awesome albeit vaguely Dickensian name of Gabrielle Scrimshaw will be speaking that this year's ISNA Canada confab:

Gabrielle Scrimshaw

()

Named “One of 3 Young Aboriginal Canadians to Watch” by the Huffington Post, Gabrielle was born in Northern Canada and is a proud member of the Hatchet Lake First Nation. Over the past eight years, she has studied international business and policy in Australasia, Asia, the Americas and Europe. In addition Gabrielle became the youngest Associate accepted into one of Canada’s most competitive post-graduate finance programs. In 2013, Gabrielle was honoured as Indspire‘s First Nations Youth Recipient, considered the highest honour the Indigenous community bestows upon their own achievers. Most recently Gabrielle co-founded a national not-for-profit for Aboriginal Professionals and was accepted into the MBA programs at Harvard Business School and the Stanford Graduate School of Business. She is also a regular contributor for some of Canada’s largest national media outlets, and has been profiled by Forbes, CBC, CTV, The Globe and Mail, and the Huffington Post, among others.

Most impressive. Considering her credentials, though, she should have been smart enough to issue a very polite "NO" when ISNA, a Muslim Brotherhood creation, came a-calling. But I guess the beauty of "intersectionality" is that it can cover a multitude of sins.Update:LGBT Activist Among Victims Hacked to Death in Bangladesh--lots of "intersectionality"--the really bad kind--on view in that. (Can't wait for an LGBT activist to be invited to speak at an ISNA get together.)

I go on at some length about the quantum imbroglio because it furnishes an excellent example of Trudeau’s glitzy superficiality. A skin-deep performer, he is good at looking the look and talking the talk, but at precious little else. Trudeau’s manifold “accomplishments” surely have nothing to do with the intelligence and wisdom needed to govern a G7 nation. Mastering yoga poses, exhibiting snowboarding techniques, horsing around in a boxing ring, stripping for a ladies’ charity function, or whiffling (in his case, glibly and without comprehension) on quantum computing are completely unrelated to an understanding of the thorny political and economic issues that go with responsible leadership in the turmoil of national and international affairs—apart from the fact that the dignity of statesmanship has gone by the board.

The truth is, I suspect, that Trudeau’s public performances in the physical and intellectual domains, as well as his documented appeal to female effusiveness, is a vivid expression of his followers’ utter lack of political sobriety, intellectual acumen and emotional maturity. That a country could give its support and a 66 per cent approval rating to a preening charlatan boggles the mind and beggars the imagination—or would, if Americans had not done the same with a smooth-talking ignoramus like Barack Obama, who thinks the U.S. consists of 57 states and that Austrians speak Austrian.

Jonathan Kay's piece--Don't blame the media for Islamophobia--has been up on the NatPo site for several days, but showed up in the paper version only today. Kay's anti-blame advisory is aimed at none other than Harpoon Siddiqui, who has vacated his bully pulpit at the Toronto Star only to mount it in other places, most recently at Toronto's Aga Khan Museum. Kay, who appeared at the same event, thinks Harpoon is "quite moderate on most issues" (ha!), although he does take issue with, oh, let's call it Harpoon's mediaphobic spin:

Yes, the media are fascinated with terrorism — because our readers are fascinated by terrorism. Just as they are fascinated with all forms of horrifying violence — including the kind caused by street gangs, natural disasters and Karla Homolka. It’s human nature.

We pay attention when things go bang and boom and all bloody-like.

We also pay attention to questions of motive. And since Islamist terrorists from Islamic state of Iraq and the Levant, Boko Haram, al-Shabab and al-Qaida insistently, repeatedly and explicitly tell us that they are committing their slaughter in the name of Islam, we report that, too. When terrorists in the Middle East, Africa and South Asia stop praising Allah as they self-detonate — or, better yet, stop self-detonating altogether — we media types will be the first to report on that phenomenon, as well.

This part--wherein Kay, who co-ghosted Justin Trudeau's "memoirs," sticks it to Stephen Harper and pats himself furiously on the back (for his own supposedly much more highly refined sensibilities re "Islamophobia") is a bit rich:

Moreover, it would be nice if Siddiqui might acknowledge that in the last two years, not one but two Canadian governments — Stephen Harper’s Tories and Pauline Marois’ Parti Québécois — have been booted out of office in large part because media commentators were disgusted by their Islamophobic fearmongering on the niqab issue. I myself was working at the National Post during the 2014 Quebec election campaign, and personally authored several articles denouncing the xenophobic messaging from PQ hardliners. In both cases, it wasn’t media Islamophobia that held sway at the polls, it was media anti-Islamophobia.

Canadians should be proud that they live in a tolerant country where both anti-Semitism and Islamophobia are marginalized and discredited sentiments. Haroon Siddiqui is correct to advocate vigilance against these forms of hatred, but he greatly exaggerates the scope of the problem.

Kay's piece pussyfoots around the real issue, as I point out in this letter:

There's a problem--a big one--with the way both Haroon Siddiqui and Jonathan Kay conflate anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, wrapping them up in one neat package. And the problem is this: a great deal of today's Jew-hate/Israel-hate is being fomented and perpetrated by Muslims. In fact, one could argue that the reason the Siddiquis of the world are so intent on playing the Islamophobia card--or is it a canard?-- is to divert attention away from Islam's longstanding "Jewish problem," which is part and parcel of its longstanding "infidel problem," both of which are playing out locally and globally.

Haroon Siddiqui engages in such a conflation because he knows that in our multicultural Trudeaupia, victimhood is venerated, and that Canadians, who are probably the least hateful but most masochistic people on the planet, will, if given the chance, happily wallow in their own purported awfulness.

As for why Jonathan Kay would bookend the two hatreds: he's a secular Jew who, though highly intelligent and the author of a book about nutty true believers, has demonstrated again and again that he does not--and, I venture, he may never--"get" religious belief, neither the depth of feeling it engenders nor the role it plays, for both good and ill, in shaping identity.

Friday, April 22, 2016

I'm up to my elbows in matzah ball mix even as delicious things are cooking in my oven and on my stove.In other words, Passover is upon me and blogging will have to take a back seat for now.I hope to be back at it on Monday.

The following is an excerpt from a lecture delivered at the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto by Haroon Siddiqui, the Star’s former columnist and editorial page editor emeritus.

He argued that the media have contributed to widespread Islamophobia by conflating Muslim terrorists with all Muslims. In doing so, he said, the media are violating their own declared principles of fair and ethical journalism:

The biggest culprits have been the National Post and the Postmedia group of newspapers across the country, which now include the Sun chain.

Hardly a week goes by without these publications finding something or other wrong with Muslims and Islam. These publications are forever looking for terrorists under every Canadian minaret. They are hunting for any imam or any Muslim who might make some outrageous statement that can be splashed as proof of rampant Muslim militancy or malevolence.

In the 1950s there was the Red Scare. Today, Postmedia are giving you the Green Scare...

Michele Mandel exposes the racket that rewards petulance for the sake of "human rights". The latest payoff involves an individual whose "human rights" were abridged via the "inconsiderate" deployment of a citrus fruit:

There is enough real discrimination in this province to address — so why is Ontario’s human rights tribunal wasting its time and our tax dollars on salving the hurt feelings of the too easily offended?

The latest? A germaphobe has just been awarded $12,000 because, among other things, his local Baton Rouge restaurant put lemon in his water.

Seriously, is that a fundamental human right now — that your restaurant seat must be sprayed with Purell and your cutlery delivered on a freshly laundered napkin?

Accommodation for true disabilities is one thing, but bending over backwards to this ridiculous degree is simply insane.

Are restaurants now going to be obligated to go nut-free because 1% of the population believes it’s discriminatory to have allergens in their midst? Will department stores be forced to stop providing perfume testers because it tramples someone’s right to a scent-free zone? Will skyscraping office towers require escalators to the 32nd floor because a tenant with elevator phobia demands his right to be free of fear?

Where does it end?

Where does it end? It doesn't. It can't. Not if the province wants to keep this "human rights" kvetch-o-rama up and running. And it wants to because the "human rights" machine, that consummate wolf in sheep's clothing, is a vehicle that enables the state to assert its power/authority over its citizenry in all sorts of sly and intrusive ways (hello, gender-fluid public washrooms for all!).

Re: Seeking Civility On Campus, Marc Newburgh and Sara Lefton, April 19.Inclusion at York University is a broad campus issue, and therefore the membership of the president’s advisory committee on inclusion needs to reflect the breadth of the York community. The committee’s role is to consider and provide advice on approaches to promoting inclusion in order to ensure a safe campus environment for all.

To be clear, this committee was not formed as a result of any specific incident. Its members were not selected because of previously expressed views on specific issues, nor is the committee intended as a venue for advocacy on specific issues. Its objective is to bring together York scholars to advance our shared goals of strengthening York’s commitment to building an inclusive and diverse campus through dialogue that nurtures the respectful exchanges of ideas.

The committee is an advisory body, not a decision-making body, and its mandate is to ensure that all voices are heard. Most certainly, the committee would not consider the boycott, divestment and sanctions question, nor will it make recommendations to York’s Board of Governors.Mamdouh Shoukri, president and vice-chancellor, York University, Toronto.

Wednesday, April 20, 2016

Just now in the mail I got an unsolicited envelope from "UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency."Apparently, they want me to pony up some dough-re-mi for the "Syria Crisis" because "REFUGEES ARE DYING FOR A CHANCE TO LIVE."Looking at the several items inside, I learn that not only will my funds go to help fleeing Syrians, they "will also have an immediate impact for the hundreds of thousands of refugees who have not fled to Europe, but are currently living in camps in countries bordering Syria, including Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey."In another insert, printed on glossy, more expensive paper, the agency has helpfully crunched some numbers for me. Under the heading "Refugees and migrants crossing the Mediterranean to Europe," I learn the following:

2016 arrivals as of 15 March 2016
153,158 arrivals by sea
448 dead/missing

2015
1,015,078 arrivals by sea
3,700 dead/missing

Good to know. And I'm perfectly willing to throw some support UNHCR's way--just as soon as the UN can explain to my satisfaction why Palestinians are the only ones who merit their own personal UN refugee agency--UNRWA--even though the war that displaced them occurred almost 70 years ago.Seems more than a little unfair--and more than a little agenda-driven--to me.

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Scaramouche is my nom de Web. My real name is Mindy G. Alter, and I like to think of myself as a free speecher with a sense of humour. My bailiwick: fighting on behalf of all the good things that free speech helps safeguard, and doing my utmost to highlight the malevolence and imbicilities of those who oppose freedom, whomever they may be.